SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!

Consortium member Ann Williams – commissioning and contracts manager, Liverpool City Council has been named social housing sector’s Top Tech Innovator in the Tech Leaders List 2018

Ann Williams at Liverpool City Council, together with Informed Actions, delivered the Liverpool Safehouse project. This involved fitting 2,000 homes with Safehouse devices linked to a city-wide low power radio network. Microsoft Azure and advanced analytics are used to optimise the delivery and efficiency of care services.

Safehouse includes unique sensor technology to monitor temperature, smoke and fire alarm sounds, humidity, movement, and light. The ambition is to use machine learning and algorithms to improve living conditions and health and social care provision. It has the potential to reduce the cost of housing, while increasing the life of housing stock.

It’s a dynamic partnership, bringing together a unique mix of public sector and SME organisations, from Liverpool and beyond. The group’s experience is gained from academic, health, social care, wireless, emerging and software design sectors.

Our 11 testbeds and trials are focused around parts of Liverpool where communities have limited access to reliable broadband. We plan to connect The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen Hospital and Sensor City with the new accelerator, which is in the Knowledge Quarter. Our work will also extend into parts of Kensington.

Blu Wireless Technology is using mmWave 60GHz technology to bring gigabit connectivity to these communities. Health and social care professionals will deliver care at patients’ homes, enabling us to show how fifth generation networks can support the benefits of home care and health/social care consultation.

All of the trails have measurable social benefits and follow on from existing work on digital health and social care apps that was carried out by Liverpool Council, as part of the Stop and Go project. The trials that we are running will employ cutting edge technologies like low-cost unlicensed mmWave 5G broadband, sensors, open source networking, artificial intelligence, mixed reality, virtual reality, Smart Health, robotics and the Internet of Things (IoT).